[Kde-pim] KMail merged folder properties - Bug 115611

[Thomas McGuire]

Hi Jonathan,

On Tuesday 03 February 2009 18:15:37 Jonathan Marten wrote:
> The bug refers to merging all of the various dialogues relating to
> folder properties - "Mailing List Management", "Expire" and "Shortcut" -
> into tabs of a single folder "Properties" dialogue.  Maybe a
> contentious issue, but it's been something that has been annoying me
> for some time - and not just myself, the bug has 3 duplicates and 115
> votes.
>
> I know that the original tabbed dialogue was split up after a
> usability study.  However, that was four years ago... since then, more
> options have been added to the menus (both menu bar and folder popup),
> including some very obscure ones which certainly don't need to be
> available with just a click.  The "Properties" dialogue has also been
> changed back from a simple dialogue to a tabbed one, having introduced
> the "Templates" tab.  Unfortunately both the original study on
> openusability.org, and the gmane discussion referred to in the bug,
> seem to be now unavailable.
>
> In the absence of specifics from those, I'd be inclined to follow the
> general usability principle that context menus should be as brief as
> possible and should contain only frequently-used options.  So the
> options that are now in the tabbed dialogue should be removed from the
> context menu.  If that confuses some people who now expect them to be
> there, then they can be reenabled by a hidden option.  All of the
> options can be left in the menu bar "Folder" menu by default, anyone
> who would like to remove them from there too can edit their rc file.
> Those options from either menu will lead to the appropriate page of
> the combined "Properties" dialogue.
>
> Prototype screen shots are at:
>
>    http://www.keelhaul.me.uk/kde/popupmenu.png
>    http://www.keelhaul.me.uk/kde/props1.png
>    http://www.keelhaul.me.uk/kde/props2.png
>    http://www.keelhaul.me.uk/kde/props3.png
>    http://www.keelhaul.me.uk/kde/props4.png
>    http://www.keelhaul.me.uk/kde/props5.png
>
> The final "Maintenance" tab is new; it contains some information on
> the folder/index files, and the compaction options.  The potentially
> dangerous "Rebuild Index" and "Rebuild IMAP Cache" options are only
> here, not in the popup menu - a casual user shouldn't really be using
> these options.
>
> Any comments?  If it is worth going ahead, then I'll post the code
> changes on reviewboard.

What I definitely agree with is moving things like "Rebuild Index" out of the 
context menu. See also Aaron's mail from November, he has some points about 
the order of the entries (which changed with the SoC merge), it would be nice 
if you can include that.

In general, I also tend to agree with the rework of the folder properties 
dialog.
But I would really like the input of people who were around when the usability 
changes were made (Till?), maybe they know the reason for some of the changes.
Regards,
Thomas

Regards,
Thomas
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